Re: 3.6 Feature: IBus/XKB integration

[Christophe Fergeau <teuf gnome org>]

Hey,

I just read the whole thread, and had a few questions, I'm more or
less arbitrarily answering to this email in the thread.

2012/5/13 Marguerite Su <i marguerite su>:
> and another background knowledge:
>
> fcitx is capable of inputing in Traditional Chinese( IBus don't make
> it even work), Simplified Chinese(as I said, top choice if user has
> choices), Korean( korean Ubuntu users is discussing it in their forums
> just right now.), Vietnamese.
>
> and Japanese is starting in two months after Weng finished his
> graduation paper. it's for GNOME 3.6 right? he invent fcitx-keyboard
> in just two days but solid. can't you wait  two month and work on
> other parts of fcitx?

Did I understand correctly that fcitx does *not* have japanese support
today but that it should be implemented in the coming months? This
would mean that fcitx is not a suitable CJK method now as has been
said throughout the thread, but just a CK input method until Weng does
his magic ;)

This leads to my next question, this thread so far has been focused on
CJK (and Vietnamese in this email). Are they the only languages that
needs input methods? Or are they needed too for arabic, hebrew,
thailandese, ... ? If yes, is fcitx the IM framework to use for these
too?

Having an IM abstraction framework has been one recommended by some
people in this thread. One concern I have with that is that the
fragmentation we have now will stay, and we'll have the foo IM
framework which will be favoured by people who want to input language
A, the bar IM framework will be the best for language B. In such a
situation, people who want to input both A and B (think A speaker
learning the B language) will not get a satisfying user experience.

Finally, please correct me if I misunderstood, but after reading the
thread, I'm under the impression that ibus and fcitx work equally well
to input CJK "characters" (except for a few ibus bugs that I guess
could be fixed?). What makes fcitx better is that it provides advanced
functionalities such as word autocompletion (+ highly customizable
autocompletion window and online autocompletion lists), "macros"
(short key sequences that will get replaced by a full word), ... My
feeling about these advanced functionalities is that they are not
really CJK-specific, and that this could be useful too when typing
English or French texts, in which case this may be worth integrating
at a higher level instead of having this in the input method? I guess
the answer is that they are different things, but asking does not hurt
;)

Christophe